Risking Nuclear War
Escalating brinkmanship might be justified if victory were in sight or if any of this contributed to American security. But none of these things are true.
We are probably closer to a nuclear war than any previous point in my lifetime.
As a Generation X kid who grew up during the Cold War, fear of nuclear war is still a deeply ingrained instinct. We read Alas Babylon in school and saw The Day After to give us a sense of what a nuclear apocalypse might be like. Everyone understood it was the summum malum, the end of civilization as we know it.
The fear of nuclear war did not stop all conflict during the Cold War, but it did ensure that conflicts were limited. During that tense time, there were no world wars or sustained fighting between the nuclear powers themselves. Instead, wars took place among proxies far from the territory of the superpowers, such as the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan.
A few decades after the end of the Cold War—during which no one was particularly worried about a nuclear war—a new conflict with Russia has arisen due to major disagreements about the nature of the international order and our respective places within it. What began in 2014 as a limited confrontation between Russia and a western-backed Ukraine has evolved into an enormous conventional war.
After the West increased its support to Ukraine following Russia’s 2022 invasion, there was some recognition among western leaders about the dangers of provocation. Even so, such risk has increased in an incremental fashion. At first, western leaders thought it was too much to provide tanks, but soon the West relented, and the Ukrainians received M1 Abrams and Leopard II tanks.
Then, there was a lot of hemming and hawing about providing F-16 fighter jets. This surprised me, as they are not materially better than Ukraine’s MiG-29s, but, apparently, one of the Russian objections was that F-16s can carry nuclear armaments and risk confusion about western intentions. But now Ukraine has these as well.
We have since crossed the last phase line. Having provided Ukraine the Storm Shadow and ATACMS medium-range missiles, we have now authorized their use against Russian territory, in spite of increasingly desperate Russian warnings. After this authorization, Ukraine promptly fired them into Russian territory. Russia claims that these weapons can only be targeted with direct western involvement and that the West is practically and morally responsible for their use.
See Also:
Russian Military Replaces Senior Commander in Eastern Ukraine – RBC
Frozen Russian assets face uncertain future under Trump
Russia is leveraging gold and working with China to bypass Western sanctions
Kyiv Says Russia Shot Dead Five Surrendered Soldiers
Will Trump Choose Victory or Defeat in Ukraine?
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